


An Alternate Use For Ball Pits

by olderbynow



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/F, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 09:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8322871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olderbynow/pseuds/olderbynow
Summary: There's a school library, a ball pit and a bit of snogging. (Let's call this a 'deleted scene' type thing from the Fast Times at Wardlow High universe. It doesn't really belong in that story, but it kind of does?)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heavyheadedgal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heavyheadedgal/gifts).



> Since it's basically Heavyheadedgal's fault that _Fast Times at Wardlow High_ exists, she should have some of that for her birthday. (It's like when you randomly mention liking owls, and then you get owl-related gifts for every Christmas and birthday for all eternity.) 
> 
> But since she _also_ likes Mac/Rosie, I thought she should get that as well.

“What about her?” Phryne asks, and Mac has a very strong sense of deja-vu. 

She has definitely been here before.

Except, not _exactly_ here.

In fact, she’s not entirely sure where ‘here’ is; it looks like it might be a cross between the school library and the play centre where she celebrated her ninth birthday. (Three kids threw up that day, none of them were her. And still she never got to go back.) There’s a ball pit over in one corner, right next to what she’s pretty sure is an entire library section of LGBT literature.

The school library has neither of those things.

And she’s pretty sure the _Play Palace_ only had one of them.

Mac looks around, trying to decide which ‘her’ Phryne is talking about, except there’s no one else there. All she can see is the sleeve of someone’s shirt sticking out from behind a row of bookcases. (Not school uniform, she notes, although considering the ball pit and the fact that there’s a shelf displaying only _Lammy Award_ winners, non-regulation clothing probably isn’t such a huge deal in whatever alternate reality this is.) 

“Who is it?” she asks Phryne, who just laughs and shrugs her shoulders before getting up to leave.

She watches Phryne walk away, hips swaying seductively and that uniform skirt still way too short to be allowed. She grins and shakes her head. _You’re cute, Phryne, but no thanks._

When Phryne’s completely gone, Mac gets up as well (Why were they sitting on the floor to begin with?) and moves to where the sleeve has now vanished. Not really sure why she’s doing it, she looks back to check that Phryne’s _really_ gone, and then she walks down the aisle that’s now empty.

She turns the corner at the other end of it, wondering if this is how she’s going to die: bludgeoned to death with a hardback copy of _The Well of Loneliness_.

Except instead of a blow to the head she gets… nothing. There’s no one there. She turns another corner, landing her right in that _LGBT Fiction_ section she’s pretty sure doesn’t exist in any high school anywhere, and there’s Rosie Sanderson, wearing an outfit that looks like it’s out of a history book (her skirt so long you can’t see her legs at all, just a pair of brown maryjanes sticking out under the hem) and leafing through _The Price of Salt_.

“I wonder why they changed the title later,” Rosie says conversationally, as if this is all completely normal.

Mac shrugs. “Because it’s not about the price of salt, but it is about a woman named Carol?”

Rosie laughs and puts the book back on the shelf. “Do you want to go in the ball pit?”

Mac can feel her eyes going wide. “What?”

“Well, it’s there.” Rosie shrugs. “We might as well.”

Which is a logic you can’t really argue with, Mac supposes, and the ball pit _was_ her favourite part of that whole birthday party. “Sure.”

Mac hangs back and lets Rosie get into the ball pit first. The thing is obviously not made for people their size, and Rosie has to bend down and sort of half-crawl, half-jump, which gives Mac a view that’s not bad at all, and she spends about five seconds too long gawking, not realising it’s her turn to get in until Rosie actually tells her to stop staring and get a move on.

Mac’s embarrassed, but then Rosie grabs her hand and pulls her into the pit so she practically lands on top of her, and that’s a whole new level of awkward to deal with, made worse by the obvious ogling that was happening just before, obviously. But also mainly Rosie’s fault, actually, so Mac just pulls a face that could either mean “Sorry,” or “Do you see a wormhole nearby I can jump through?” and moves off of her.

“I used to love ball pits when I was a kid,” Rosie says, picking up a handful of balls and letting them roll down herself.

“Me too,” Mac agrees, watching the balls as they fall, and it’s true: her love affair with the ball pit had been short but intense. She’s pretty sure she remembers crying when her mother told her it was time to go home. Which probably isn’t something she’ll be bringing up right this moment.

Rosie twists her body, still lying on her back, burrowing herself into the pool of balls until only her arms and head are visible. Then she takes a deep breath and holds it, squeezing her nostrils shut with two fingers and diving in completely.

Mac waits for a few seconds for her to resurface, but when nothing happens she copies her, except less dramatically with the lungful of air and the nose.

When Rosie finally does get up Mac can feel herself shifting downwards a bit further, the balls holding her up moving to fill the space left by Rosie’s body. Mac stays where she is, just letting herself enjoy the way it almost feels like she’s floating. (When she was nine it absolutely felt like she was.)

Then the balls covering her start disappearing and she opens her eyes to find Rosie looking down at her, her arms full of balls.

“Hey.” Rosie smiles, throwing the balls to the side carelessly and grabbing a few more to get rid of.

Mac smiles back, staring at Rosie, her ridiculously neat eyebrows, green eyes and just slightly smudged mascara. Lips that are glistening with remnants of stubborn lip gloss. Mac wonders briefly if it’s the flavoured kind and she’ll taste like synthetic cherries, and only just has time to tell herself that’s an absurd question she’ll never know the answer to, before Rosie leans down and brushes those glossy lips lightly against her own.

Turns out they don’t taste of cherry, they taste of cinnamon and apples, and they’re so soft it seems impossible. Even when they get more insistent, parting so teeth can scrape lightly against Mac’s bottom lip, making her shudder, they’re soft.

This is pretty much the opposite of that time in year 8 when Bert dared her to kiss Guy Stanley and she did it, just to make sure she wouldn’t like it. (Which she didn’t. At all.)

“Uh, what are you doing?” Mac asks, pulling her head back slightly and wanting to punch herself in the face for doing it, because questioning this might mean it’ll stop and right now she does _not_ want it to stop.

Rosie smiles, clearly not bothered by the question at all. “I’m kissing you. You were there, so I thought I might as well.”

“Okay,” Mac agrees, shoving about a million follow-up questions back down her throat and then leaning up to return the favour. The balls holding her up move when she shifts, however, and she ends up closer to the floor and further away from Rosie, so in the end she just grabs Rosie’s shirt collar and pulls her down on top of her.

Rosie giggles and lets herself fall, their bodies pressed together, her legs on either side of Mac’s right one, and then she kisses Mac again, slowly and thoroughly; and not that she had any doubts about this at all, but yeah, Mac definitely prefers girls, she thinks as Rosie’s tongue brushes against hers, hard and soft at the same time and making a swirling movement that has Mac squirming under her.

When she pulls back, Mac actually whimpers in disappointment, but Rosie looks at her in a way she’s pretty sure means she shouldn’t be too sorry, and then she leans back down, tugging lightly on Mac’s bottom lip with her teeth and then releasing it, kissing her way down her jaw and throat instead.

Mac can hear the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears (except that’s not what she can hear at all, of course, it’s just blood flowing through her carotid artery more erratically as her blood pressure increases) as Rosie kisses her way down to the collar of Mac’s t-shirt, her hands trailing down her sides.

Just as Rosie’s hands begin to push up her t-shirt, the school bell sounds, announcing the start of class, and Mac’s eyes - that fluttered closed somewhere in between the whimper and Rosie’s lips brushing against her jaw - open wide and she looks at Rosie, panic rising at the thought of the two of them being discovered like this, in the middle of the ball pit in the school library.

But then the school bell turns into the ringing of her mobile phone, and she wakes up in her own bed, her face flushed and her body still not completely up to date on the fact that what it thought was happening isn’t happening at all.

She sighs deeply, takes a calming breath trying to steady herself, and then she grabs her phone from the nightstand, checking the display. 

Of course. Who else would call at such a ridiculously inconvenient time?

“This had better be bloody important, Phryne,” she says darkly.

Phryne laughs lightly. “Ooh, am I interrupting something exciting?” she asks, sounding almost half-worried.

Mac sighs deeply. She kind of was, but she’ll never, ever, _ever_ know that. “No. I was just… sleeping.”

“Oh,” Phryne says, clearly slightly disappointed by that answer, although Mac’s not sure why she’d have expected anything else. “Well, I’m sorry for waking you, but I just had the _weirdest_ dream, and I have to tell someone and it’s either you or Guy - we’re playing tennis in an hour - and I’m not sure I’d trust him with this sort of information. And I know you hate this stuff, but honestly, Mac. I cannot go to school on Monday without getting this out of my system.”

“Okay.” Mac sighs again. “Tell me all about it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’ve never been more interested in anything in my life,” Mac says sarcastically. Whatever Phryne’s dream was, it can’t have been any weirder than the one she just had. Aliens could’ve appeared and told her Douglas Adams got it wrong, it’s actually 43, and _still_ it would be less weird. In fact, short of Phryne telling her she just had a wet dream about Rosie Sanderson - of all people, seriously - Mac’s pretty sure she’s winning this competition she’s not at all participating in.

By Monday morning Phryne’s still going on about her damn dream (It’s the 1920s and she’s a detective and Dot works for her, helping her solve crime, and Jack Robinson _still_ isn’t responding to her seriously A grade flirting.) and Mac’s so busy pretending to be listening that she walks right into Rosie Sanderson.

“Shit, sorry,” she says, completely flustered and looking anywhere except at Rosie’s face. “I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Rosie says, laughing slightly at the complete overreaction to what really is not a massive incident, unless you’re Mac and you can suddenly taste apples and cinnamon for no reason related to the Weet-Bix you had for breakfast. “You didn’t kill me or anything.”

“Well, sorry anyway,” Mac finally manages, glancing quickly at Rosie’s face (flawless mascara and freshly applied lip gloss) and then letting herself get pulled away by Phryne.

“Oh, yes. And Jack and Rosie were _married_! How weird is that?”

Mac turns her head to look at Rosie, her back to them now as she chats with her friends, Mac’s near meltdown already forgotten. “Very weird,” she agrees. “Now please shut up about it.”

Jack Robinson appears in the hallway ahead of them, coming out of a classroom with his head in a book.

Phryne smiles. “Unresponsive, but not immune,” she says happily in a low voice, clearly remembering something from her dream, making her way through the crowd of students so she ends up having to brush against Jack as she passes him. 

“Sorry, Jack,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.

He looks at her, slightly confused, and Mac’s not sure if it’s her proximity or that fact that she’s apologising for it that has him baffled, but he half-smiles at both of them and then returns to his book without a word.

Mac glances back once again, and catches Rosie staring at the three of them. _Yeah. Sorry, Jack_ , she thinks to herself, probably meaning it a hell of a lot more than Phryne just did. Because if reality’s anything like her dream was, then it’s definitely Jack’s loss.

Then she shakes her head to get rid of the images that have popped up again and reminds herself that it’s _Rosie Sanderson_ and dreams are dumb, and anyway, she has volunteering this week.


End file.
